Whispered Words
by Shangri-La
Summary: Schuldig investigates the flower shop to find Aya-chan the only one remaining and decides to spare her life just long enough to hear her story.


Didn't check this for spelling or grammar, so it probably has mistakes, but I'm short on time, so hey! Who cares? Gah, boredom...  
  
Don't own Weiss Kruez - the song is by the Goo Goo Dolls.  
  
*****  
  
Schuldig was insanely bored.  
  
Nothing good ever came of that.  
  
~*~  
  
It just hurts, ok? That's all.  
  
Those were the last words she had ever spoken to him. They were sharp and they were unforgiving, but she was used to it, and even though he wasn't, it didn't change a thing. She didn't expect it to. Cringing inwardly, the two had parted, barriers suddenly strewn between all the words they could've said but never did; communications impossible.  
  
She supposed there was unrequited love involved, although no physical injuries to cause the pain. Still, all that really bothered her was that no one stayed - everyone left. It'd been like that for...well, for a long time. People left and she stayed, because even though it seemed like the opportunities to move on came to her, she never wanted to seize them. She'd rather stay with her friends. But friends leave and memories remain and all she had left were shattered fragments of once happy times and hard times and fleeting glimpses of smiles and echoes of voices.  
  
Once, there had been a little girl, but when he had left... By the time he left, it was too late to tell him, and the child was either his first or one of the many no one ever mentioned to him. She didn't know, she just knew the little girl was gone now.  
  
Every day she cleaned the shop and dusted the shelves and cut the prices on all the exquisite flowers, but who cared anymore? The customers who had once flocked there because it was fun and it was where everyone else went just passed by now, even when she called out to inquire on where they had been. No one wanted to drop in when it was becoming run down and spoke of nothing but a lonely girl who had been abandoned.  
  
"Do you think you'd be ok if I wasn't here with you?" Yohji had asked lightly, because he was the last one remaining.  
  
"Of course," she had retorted, thinking she'd appear weak if she had objected.  
  
She had not foreseen the sad look that washed over his face and the way he shrugged helplessly when he replied, "I'm glad, because...I'm leaving."  
  
She had lowered her eyes in surprise and studied the wooden floor of the shop that once had sold only flowers but now also had music and other small trinkets in stock. The broom in her hands, clutched so tight her knuckles turned white, scraped coarsely against the ground at her slightest movement. Pale yellow bristles broke at a harsh sweep. Everything was falling apart.  
  
"Do you hate me?" His dazzling emerald eyes peered at her questioningly, soft and unguarded for once, his shoulder-length, brown-blonde hair falling in slight waves against his long face.  
  
"It just hurts," she murmured dully.  
  
Silence.  
  
And then she looked up at him and thrust the broom into his hands, not knowing why but knowing that she had to do something to keep from screaming. "It just hurts, ok?" she bit out, glaring at him. "That's all." And she turned and stomped back into the storage room.  
  
Everyone had left.  
  
First, it had been her brother, though not be his own choosing. She shuddered whenever the memory of the telephone call relaying his death surfaced in her mind. Next, Omi - but Omi was young and had no real attachment to her, and he had to go to school - college was important, right? Ken...she still missed Ken. He had drifted away without any real purpose - just couldn't sit still, she supposed. But Yohji was still a sharp prick at her heart, someone who had passed out of her life unexpectedly and without reason, leaving her with the shop and other burdens he had not known about.  
  
Then came the day, her twentieth birthday, that the strange man had knocked on the dusty door as she tried to scrub down the filthy floors. Pushing a loose fall of black hair from her face, she had thrown the soggy sponge back into the soapy water, a putrid brown by that time, and stood to welcome the visitor.  
  
He was tall; he was unusual, and he just walked right in. Not much older than her but acting like it, jade eyes flashing at every delicate turn of his head and crane of slim neck, he appeared just a breath of her imagination, moving here and there, touching things such as books and flower vases curiously as he spoke. "You have come of age," he told her seriously, but she was not impressed, eyeing him critically while sort of leaning on a mop, grimy water dripping from her fingers.  
  
His name was Schuldig, and he was deeply tanned from spending hours beneath the sun. Long and lean and garbed all in white, he explained to her that he came from Schwartz, but he had not been sent officially - this was his own idea, his own little excursion.  
  
Music was playing over the loudspeakers, as always. She had to listen carefully to catch his soft words, almost sucked in to the beat of the song and lost amidst the singer's lyrics.  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
He sat down on a stool by the counter, dangling long legs to let his toes scrape the freshly washed floor. "How long has it been since I killed your brother?" he asked in a nasal voice, smirking at her widened eyes and brushing a stray strand of red hair from his forehead.  
  
Slowly, she let her tight muscles relax and lowered her head, not really surrendering to him, but sort of accepting his presence and his crime and that she was powerless. "It's been...two years," she answered slowly.  
  
"Ja, I remember now." Schuldig tilted back thoughtfully on the stool and leaned against the wall, his graceful body maintaining balance perfectly. "Tell me how life has been, Aya-chan."  
  
Sadly, she dropped back to her knees and took the sponge in hand again, stroking it halfheartedly at the wooden floor. "I'm all alone now..." she murmured.  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Yes. Omi left to go to college. He was so smart - I just got an e-mail from him yesterday, but we barely have anything to talk about anymore... He always wants to visit, but he's so busy. Too busy. I wanted to go to college, but I just didn't... I mean, after the coma thing, I never completed high school - I couldn't follow him, could I?"  
  
Schuldig nodded silently, the corners of his lips curling in a semi- sadistic smile.  
  
On impulse, she looked up at him. "I remember when you killed my brother. Ken found him out in the back alley, shot straight through the heart. I thought my world had ended - it was so cruel..."  
  
"What ever happened to Ken?"  
  
"Oh, I don't know. I haven't talked to him in over a year."  
  
"And...Yohji?"  
  
Briefly, a smirk of her own flitted across her face as she thought of the tall, broad-shouldered man walking away from the flower shop, his hands stuffed deep into his trench coat pockets. "Yohji? What can I say about him... He's gone."  
  
Schuldig remained silent, although he took a gun from the inside pocket of his white blazer and began to fiddle with it. Aya glanced up, saw it, but kept on talking, this time more quietly.  
  
"He didn't know about...the baby. Well, I didn't know either at the time. I tried to take care of her, but she got sick one day... Her name was Molly. Pretty name, isn't it? She was such a happy child, so cute. She looked a little like him, had his eyes. I always thought he'd call... I guess he did a few times, but the machine always picked it up and he never left a phone number for me to call him back. I never got to tell him about Molly..."  
  
Shuldig polished the barrel of the gun with his sleeve. "Do you think he loved you?"  
  
"He said he did. But Yohji...Yohji loved many women before me - I don't know why I thought I wouldn't just be one of them in his eyes... Oh, haha, Ran warned me - he didn't like Yohji, really. I remember...days when it was sunny and we'd go to the park and Yohji would walk with me and we'd just talk about things... We could talk about anything. We were so close, then... I miss him every now and then." She leaned into the sponge, raking it harshly across the floor, causing it to expel filthy water around her knees. "Just the little things... How he smiled and his eyes and when the sky was blue, how he would sing little songs about nothing."  
  
There was silence for a few moments as both paused from the conversation to think. The song swelled around them, the only noise in the room.  
  
Schuldig leveled the gun at her, taking aim carefully, smirking at her from behind the barrel. "He left you though. Why do you think that is?"  
  
"Maybe I got old, maybe I wasn't as attractive anymore... He might've gotten bored. Towards the end, right before he left, he went out with friends more and more and I found myself alone, but it was ok... As long as I still had at least a piece of his heart, I was ok. But...it got hard sometimes, just the little things." She rose onto her knees, dropping the sponge to the floor and looking at him, arms hanging limply at her sides. Slowly, she added. "Everyone leaves."  
  
He pulled the trigger.  
  
*I believed that he'd always be there... I got scared sometimes thinking that it all might end. And when it did...*  
  
She lay back on the ground, staring at the ceiling with the crimson fluid pooling beneath her, spilling over her chest and dribbling down her shoulder to drop to the floor she'd just been cleaning. The gunshot was still reverberating in her ears, a sickly warm feeling washing over her aching body.  
  
"Tell me more about Yohji," Schuldig requested calmly, as if he were merely a curious passerby.  
  
*I still think there could be someone to believe in, but I just...can't find him. It was my brother, and then Yohji - who do I look to now?*  
  
Suddenly, her mind was reeling and she felt like she was falling. Schuldig's smile was anchoring her firm to the ground, but at the same time, throwing the world into a helpless spiral around her. He was feeding off her memories, leeching onto her thoughts and carelessly going through her head, sorting through all the tidbits of information she possessed. She saw the things that he was, let her eyes grow unfocused as she watched her memories play back. The park, the store, the parties and Ran's funeral. Her feelings and his soul shrouded in mystery, revealed only once in that quiet room while it snowed outside, the silence of the winter engulfing them and their rash decision and how he had looked into her eyes and nodded slightly and laughed when she asked him if he would stay with her. When he held her hand and walked down the street with her, his eyes lingering on the cars and the stores and everything around him because Yohji was a curious and alert person, as well as protective, and why he left - she never knew... Did they just grow distant? Was he scared? Maybe...  
  
*No one... I don't have time to look to anyone*  
  
"Now you've got me curious," Schuldig murmured. "Perhaps...I'll try to find the other half of the story. But that is best left for another day."  
  
He was gone before her eyes even drifted shut.  
  
The louder speaker's blaring music slowly began to grow softer as her vision dimmed. 'You whispered words in my mouth, I spit them back out... How good do I think I'll look when they begin to break and crack?'  
  
A slow smile lit her face. Her lips mouthed the words, "I'm leaving..." 


End file.
